Sales Team Training Exercises That Reinforce SPIN, Sandler & Challenger

Most sales team training exercises focus on what reps should say according to whatever methodology the exercise was created to support. Nothing wrong with that when learning your way around a new strategy.

Alternatively, Improv-based sales training exercises focus on honing the critical people skills that power the successful implementation of any particular strategy. In other words, improv based exercises sharpen soft skills broadly applicable to any approach. It teaches universal skills.

The Radical Agreement Project is ready to help your sales teams practice these critical soft skills, including listening, adaptability, communication, staying present, and confidence. Proficiency in these skills are the real difference between top performers and so-so reps when employing methodologies such as SPIN, Challenger, Sandler, MEDDIC, or any other modern approach to sales.

I signed up for my first improv class while I was working in sales at The New York Times. In fact, I remember just before my first improv class at the UCB Theatre (which happened to be taught by this 20 year old kid named Zach Woods) I'd just won the company's Presidential Leadership Award, the highest honor the Times gave for ad sales excellence.

As a result I thought rather highly of myself at the time. And I thought I'd earned that self appraisal, frankly.

Before the Times I'd built a record as a top performer at other elite publications (the American Banker, Am Law), in the brutal world of jewelry insurance (the diamond district was a cultural smorgasbord of hard-knuckled, even underhanded negotiating techniques), and as a successful fundraiser at the Manhattan Theatre Club, where I was known for wringing surprisingly large donations from disgruntled theatre lovers (disgruntled by the company's then recent clunkers: there had been a play about penguins living on a volcano island and no fewer than two others that featured mystery poems…).

The professional sales accolades spoke for themselves. I was convinced and so were my colleagues. I knew how to sell.

Then a few months into my improv training something strange started happening. I began catching myself making rookie-level mistakes at work. I'd miss something simple a client said and respond with something that didn't quite land (or didn't make sense at all). I'd blow right past an obvious close signal or I'd launch into a pitch before I'd actually connected with the other person on a human level.

It was worrisome. What was wrong with me?

And then came the deli incident.

A confident sales rep proving how adept he really is...

I had a favorite deli, that made my favorite sandwich, that featured this unbelievable mustard. One day I walk in and order the sandwich.

"We're out of the mustard today," said the guy who made this culinary masterpiece.

I looked at him, pleasantly. "Go ahead and put it on the sandwich," I said. He looked at me blankly.

Then I looked around the deli. Everyone was looking at me blankly.

What had happened? He said he didn't have the mustard… and I told him to give it to me? Why'd I do that?

Because I wasn't listening, not really, and I wasn't present.

In my mind I was already eating the sandwich… I was in the future, not the present, I realized. Why, it was just like improv class where sometimes, a lot of times, I wouldn't hear what my scene partner said in a scene because in my head I was already blurting out my next "great" joke…

It was a weird moment, because I knew, technically, how to order a sandwich, but I still messed up. Just like I knew, technically, how to sell, but I was still messing up at work too.

Why now? What could be causing this sudden erosion of basic communication skills? It was so weird that this disconnected behavior should start after winning a big award, and right when I was starting to train myself in improv, which is all about listening and staying present. I should have been sharper than ever.

Then I had a terrible thought.

What if it wasn't a sudden erosion? What if I had always been a bad communicator, drifting through life, lost in my own thoughts and priorities, disconnected from the people around me? And what if my improv training had sharpened my self awareness enough to suddenly make me aware of how unaware I was?

But that couldn't be… That would mean, to be disconnected like that, that would have to mean I was terrible at sales…

What I was starting to see, uncomfortably, was that my interpersonal skills were holding me back. And the ways they were holding me back at work were oddly similar to the challenges I struggled with in improv class. After all, my teacher was forever side-coaching me on the same handful of notes:

You missed that offer (listen harder)
React to what is added (connect with your scene partner)
Stop trying to control everything (collaborate / stay present)

Those weren't just improv notes. Those were professional notes on weaknesses that were quietly capping my ceiling in sales. Weird, I thought, very, very weird.

Flash forward twenty years, and the symmetry isn't weird to me anymore, it's the foundation of my work. I'm an expert in the art form now, and I can tell you with total confidence that improv has far less to do with comedy than people think. Instead, what it is really all about, is people skills.

You know people skills, the thing sales are built on?

The effect improv has had on my own selling is hard to overstate. And it isn't a magical cure-all. Problem clients are still problems. Miscommunications still happen. Sometimes I still forget to connect with a client before launching into a close.

But my overall field goal percentage in working with difficult people, communicating clearly and connecting meaningfully is much, much higher. And I never order food items I was just told are out of stock. Because my priorities at work are now the same priorities improv training champions.

This is the thesis for the Radical Agreement Project's approach to sales training, lived out before I had language for it: you can have a great methodology (whether that's SPIN, Challenger, Sandler, or take your pick) and still leave many, many deals on the table, because the methodology is the strategy, not the execution.

Methodologies are great, provided those employing them can leverage them. Selling happens in the moment between people. Regardless of the strategy, if your reps are weak listeners, poor communicators, disconnected and slow to adjust, chances are your end of the year numbers will be underwhelming.

Think of it in terms of basketball for a moment.

Your favorite basketball team might emphasize the pick and roll, or the trendy 5 out offense, or The Bulls' famous triangle offense. Each has its advantages, but if the coaching staff is focused on the overarching strategy while their players are weak dribblers, with poor conditioning and bad shots, is the strategy going to get it done?

Most modern sales teams have a clear methodology in place and unless there is something seriously wrong with the department, most team members understand the approach. Will repeating the tenets of the same approach again really help?

Or does the team need to work on the basics? Their dribbling, their conditioning, their shooting?

If you're looking to improve your team's performance, know this: most sales teams don't have a strategy problem. They have an execution-under-pressure problem. They have a person to person problem.

The issue almost never comes down to whether reps understand the method. It comes down to what happens in unscripted moments: when the buyer says something the playbook didn't anticipate, when the room goes quiet, when the reframe has to be delivered fast to a skeptical CFO without the rep's nerve failing. None of that is a knowledge problem. It's a presence problem.

Great basketball players aren't great when first coming back to the court after an injury. They are out of rhythm, their shot is off, they need to hit the gym and get their shots up to reclaim their form. They need practice.

Improv is the people skills practice layer your methodology is missing.

And, as it would happen, improv exercises can reinforce the approach of any sales methodology with great application and specificity. Let's look at how improv can support some of today's most popular approaches to sales.

An Improv sales team training exercise in progress.

SPIN Selling & Improv

If you're not familiar: SPIN is Neil Rackham's discovery framework, built on the premise that great salespeople ask questions in a particular order (Situation, Problem, Implication, Need-payoff, or SPIN, get it?) and that the best of them spend far more time on the back half of that sequence than the average rep does. The entire method is a discipline of not pitching.

Instead, SPIN would have you keep asking questions, keep drawing the problem out, keep following it to its consequences, and to resist, for as long as possible, the screaming internal urge to start selling the moment you sniff an opening.

Now. Remember the deli?

When that guy told me he was out of mustard and I cheerfully told him to put it on anyway, what had actually gone wrong? I'd stopped listening because I was already in the future, eating the sandwich. I'd decided how the interaction was going to go, so I stopped taking in new information about how it was actually going.

That is the exact failure SPIN is built to prevent. The rep who hears one problem and immediately launches into the pitch is doing the deli thing, they're already in the future, already closing, no longer present to the human in front of them who's still telling them important things. SPIN wants you to stay in the present. Staying fully present is fundamental to improv and so there are, of course, many exercises designed to help with exactly that.

I like to start SPIN focused sales workshops with Yes And Point (click for more info), because it is a simple enough exercise that it can count as a warmup while also illustrating how deceptively difficult it can be to stay present, even when the task itself is easy. Questions Only (click for more info) is an obvious choice, just to work on the awkward feeling that arises when you ask a question when your conversation partner is probably expecting a statement instead. I might round out the first three exercises with Repeat, Reword, Say Why (click for more info), an excellent listening exercise.

All three of these games have direct pertinence to the SPIN methodology, but the real standouts are yet to come.

Environment Charades (click for more info) is, on the surface, a strong non verbal listening / communication game, but it also works the patience muscle. Each player takes a turn adding a new activity into an ever expanding tableau.

At first players will be slow to jump in, but once a pattern has been established there is often a rush to participate, sometimes with as many as 3 or 4 players jumping in simultaneously. This rush is similar to the urge to pitch once a plausible avenue to close opens up. But rushing can lead to a lack of situational awareness, how can you know what your other three teammates have contributed if you were also contributing at the same time?

Environment Charades asks you to move slowly, creating tension and working the same psychic muscle that SPIN sales reps use to withhold knee-jerk pitches. Finally the game asks players to incorporate every participant's contributions fully into the overall tableau. If something doesn't fit or changes the existing pattern you must notice and negotiate it. It is a game about being present.

Finally Fortunately / Unfortunately (click for more info) and any improv heightening game that leverages the improv axiom, If This Is True What Else Is True (there are many) are perfect for working on implication questions.

Environment Charades in action.

The Challenger Sale & Improv

The Challenger Sale method is one of the newer approaches to sales and partially for that reason, one of the more exciting. Turning traditional sales thinking on its head, the authors Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson identified Challenger sales professionals as the most effective in the field due to their ability to:

TEACH new thinking or perspectives to their clients, often by reframing existing industry models.
TAILOR their messages to particular audiences and their priorities.
TAKE CONTROL of the sales process politely but firmly.

Improv offers fun, engaging exercises that get right at each of those skills. Though all Radical Agreement workshops feature tailored curriculums designed to address specific client goals, most of our sales workshops for teams working with the Challenger methodology feature key exercises.

World's Best Coach (click for more info) is particularly well suited for practising the skill of reframing and arguing for new perspectives. In the exercise players are directed never to dispute facts, only their interpretations of them, while charged with changing the minds of their dispirited sports team. A perfect exercise to help sales reps practice the skills needed for reframing and championing new perspectives.

Improv is an art form dependent on working successfully with the specific people in your scene. There is no one "right way" to improvise, only "right ways" to improvise with different partners. For this reason improv has a slew of exercises designed to hone the ability to adjust tactics to the person you are working with.

Exercises like The Clapping Game (click for more info) and Mind Meld (click for more info) get right at the TAILOR skillset, so important to The Challenger Sale method.

Status is an important part of improv training though often central to the comedy. Actors rehearse different status relationships and how comedic premises will be received by characters of different statuses.

Perhaps no improv instructor worked more on status than Keith Johnstone, who developed a series of exercises designed to expose and provide control over the nuanced interactions that determine our relative status with others. These games are hyper fixated on minor behaviors and the impact these behaviors have on others around us. Common Johnstone created exercises that address the TAKE CONTROL skill include Status Swap (often with a variation where players in typically low status roles nonetheless assume high status), Guess The Status and Status King.

Sandler Sales Methodology & Improv

What exploration of improv's application to the most popular sales methodologies could be complete without visiting the granddaddy of them all? The Sandler Sales Method. If SPIN is about the discipline of not pitching, Sandler is about something even harder for a confident salesperson to swallow: the discipline of not chasing.

David Sandler built his system in the 1960s around a genuinely counterintuitive idea: that the rep and the buyer should be on equal footing, both equally responsible for figuring out whether there's a fit. No groveling, no happy-ears, no bending over backwards for a prospect who's stringing you along. The Sandler approach expects reps to set clear expectations up front (they call them upfront contracts), qualify hard and early, dig honestly into the buyer's pain, and be genuinely willing to walk away from a bad fit.

It flips the traditional power dynamic. Instead of an eager seller pursuing a cautious buyer, you get two adults deciding together whether this is worth either of their time.

But notice what the method quietly assumes. It assumes your reps can stay composed under pressure, hold a silence, read the room, and let a deal go without flinching. Sandler hands them the structure. It does not (cannot) hand them the soft skills that structure runs on. And those soft skills aren't learned from a slide.

They're rehearsed.

The same way a musician rehearses scales or a player gets their shots up. Improv is that rehearsal room. Let's take a look at which skills Sandler leans on hardest, and how improv drills each one.

Composure when you set the terms.

Sandler's upfront contracts ask the rep to open by naming, out loud, how a meeting will go: "By the end of our half hour we'll either have a clear next step or we'll both agree it isn't a fit, fair?"

This kind of simple honesty and clarity is part of every improviser's basic training and is actually encapsulated in the improv axiom, Play Close To Yourself. This saying asks improvisers to play their scenes truthfully without hamming it up or adopting big characters. In the Sandler world the same mantra can apply with a small adjustment, be yourself in the sales process instead of a Salesman with a capital S.

Good exercises for rehearsing this approach include Park Bench Of Truth (click for more info) and Passion Rant, games that put the emphasis on players' basic humanity.

Holding equal footing without scrambling for position.

We already discussed the trove of exercises used to address status relationships earlier in relation to The Challenger methodology. All of the games developed by Keith Johnstone have equal application here, allowing reps to practice the nuanced turbulence and swirling eddies of human hierarchical relationships, specifically the ability to meet others as equals.

Staying present in discomfort.

Improv training, and most acting training, often begins with a basic observation: it is uncomfortable to perform for others on a stage. It makes sense, being observed and judged by others who are not taking the same risks you are is obviously nerve wracking. But worrying leads to bad improv (or acting), so what to do?

The work of Viola Spolin comes in handy here. Viola's introduction to improv games all focus on setting discomfort and self judgement aside, the very things that make sitting in discomfort so uncomfortable. This series of simple exercises teach a singular lesson: how to stay focused on the present without thinking or judging yourself in it. These exercises free up beginning performers to truly listen and react in scenework, just as they will free up your sales team to act strategically in key moments, rather than to take action to end the discomfort of a moment prematurely.

The discipline to let it go.

To be an adept Sandler sales rep you must be willing to walk away from an opportunity. Improv can help practice this skill using games designed to quickly flip points of view and follow strict patterns.

For example, the game Flip Flop Speaker allows reps to practice moving in different distinct directions quickly. In Flip Flop Speaker players are asked to take a strident point of view and argue for it passionately (nothing too serious, things like, "Pancakes are the best breakfast possible,") but to take the diametrically opposed point of view and to argue for it just as vociferously whenever the instructor claps.

This game (and many others like it) teaches reps to treat the momentum of their direction as a light jacket that can be tossed off or on quickly, rather than a winter coat, with all its straps and zippers. The ability to turn on a dime like this is critical for sales professionals using the Sandler methodology. Without it reps will feel tempted to stay moving in a closing direction when new information emerges suddenly making the fit a poor one.

A Note On MEDDIC & Improv

If your team runs MEDDIC, a quick and honest word.

MEDDIC relies heavily on a qualification framework, and has less to say about a methodology for human to human conversations. It is built to keep deals clean: identify the metrics, the economic buyer, the decision criteria, the decision process, the pain, and the champion. Improv has less to add to that framework than it does to the live conversation that must power your movement through it.

Improv can help MEDDIC team tremendously by focusing on these human to human interactions. You do not build a real internal champion with a checklist, you build one by connecting with a person and earning their trust. You do not get candor from an economic buyer by listing criteria, you get it by being present and grounded enough that they decide to level with you.

Those are the same soft skills SPIN, Challenger and Sandler lean on, applied to the relationships MEDDIC depends on. The framework keeps your pipeline honest. Improv helps your reps be the kind of people that pipeline gets built with.

For Sandler, SPIN, Challenger, and MEDDIC (and all other sales approaches) improv can be an invaluable training tool, allowing reps to work the specific soft skill muscles needed to make these approaches successful. While this is broadly true, explore how The Radical Agreement Project's approach stacks up against other local providers using the city pages below.